Still in the Streamhttps://stillinthestream.com
Deep Explorations of SabiMon, 25 Sep 2017 05:01:22 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/04abae1892f6fa8c8dd4b56fd062215e?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngStill in the Streamhttps://stillinthestream.com
Non Dual Thinkinghttps://stillinthestream.com/2017/09/10/no-dual-thinking/
https://stillinthestream.com/2017/09/10/no-dual-thinking/#respondSun, 10 Sep 2017 18:11:51 +0000http://stillinthestream.com/?p=658]]>When I wrote about why sabi was important, I touched on it’s role in fostering non-dual thinking. Non-dual thinking is a bit of a buzz word in certain Integral and “Progressive Christian” circles. Two of my favorite writers, Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeault, have been speaking about it for the last few years.

Dualing Thoughts

Most thinking involves a process we call categorization. The word category comes from the Greek word, kategoria which literally means accusation. In it’s verb form kategorein means “to speak against; to accuse, assert, predicate.” Going even deeper we discover that the root kata means “down to” or ” against.” Aristotle used the word to refer to his 10 classes of things that can be named. Naming is a form of distinguishing one thing from and against another. We think in accusations. We get down to the distinctions. We slice and separate and dissect in order to stack things up. We group common things, create species, identify primary colours, tease out essential elements, puzzle out true and false, and begin to see the categories, more than the whole.

The Problem with Dualistic Thinking

Dualistic thinking causes us particular trouble when it comes to the social divisions we make as part of a group. We fall into prejudice, sexism, racism, ageism, and all the other isms. It is simply a reality of human nature that a large part of our thinking is a form of separation and conflict that we use to reinforce in-group loyalty.

Eckhart Tolle is perhaps the most well known teacher on this subject.

Our entire life is lived this way, constantly naming every thing and every one. We even name events and experiences. We take a trip to the ocean and we chop up our experience into little pieces that are conveniently named so that we can tell others about it later. “We swam in the ocean.” “We sunbathed.” “We watched the sunset.” – Eckhart Tolle Naming and Labeling Our Experience

Tolle’s caution is that this behavior blocks us from having a direct experience of the thing named or categorized.

Ditching the Distinctions

Non-dual thinking is a type of thinking that does not rely on categorization.

Richard Rohr says that shifting to non-dual thinking involves experiencing the world with a new freedom, letting the walls fall away.

“This is why teachers like Jesus make so much of mercy, and forgiveness, and grace, because these are the things that, if truly experienced, totally break dualism down. Because once you experience being loved when you are unworthy, being forgiven when you did something wrong, that moves you into non-dual thinking. You move from what I call meritocracy, quid pro quo thinking, to the huge ocean of grace, where you stop counting, you stop calculating.” – Richard Rohr Father Richard Rohr on Racism, Non-Dual Thinking, and Jesus Christ

Rohr says that for him the task of the spiritual life is to fall deeper and deeper into what he calls the “ocean of grace” where we stop keeping score, holding grudges, and insisting that our way of seeing things is the right or only way.

Sabi Helps Non Dual Thinking to Emerge

Spiral Dynamics and other theories based on the work of Clare Graves present a compelling argument for forms of thinking beyond irrational, dogmatic, rationale, entrepreneurial, and even collaborative thinking.

While it may seem obvious that each stage of development is marked by a certain way of thinking, the range or spectrum of the ways one can think is something that unfolds and expands the further you go in your development.

While we are sitting in one stage, it is difficult to grasp that there may be another way of thinking that might be more useful. For example people who have seen the value of disciplined analytical and critical thinking find it difficult to imagine any higher or better kind of thinking. For these folks, skepticism, materialism, and atheism are the best we have.

As I have already suggested, sabi is a mood or receptivity and acceptance that allows us to progress beyond polarities such as beautiful and ugly, good and bad, and right and wrong. For someone in the red, blue, or orange meme of the spiral such a sentence chills the blood. I have literally heard people sputter when I say such a thing. They are incredulous. “Do you mean to say that you don’t think anything is wrong? You are totally OK with murder and pedophilia?” This response is understandable and highlights just how hard it is to even conceive that there is any way to think about such things except within the paradigm of right and wrong.

Someone with a green, yellow, or turquoise meme, however, is able to agree that murder and pedophilia should be prevented, while at the same time resisting blaming or judging the people who engage in these acts. They see that for people to act in this way they are ill, wounded, or subjected to some extreme pressure that they lack the ability or resources to resist. The person operating from one of these memes looks to solutions that include the healing of the perpetrator, as much as preventing the act.

For someone at a lower meme, there is only one solution. Lock them up and throw away the key, or kill them.

Non-dual teachers have always emphasized grace, forgiveness, empathy, kindness, tolerance, wisdom, and patience. Most of the axial age traditions include mechanisms for transformation to this way of thinking. They involve self-emptying, dying to self, ego release, and other ways to un-clench the grasping quality of an ego in love with it’s own identity.

But too often these teachings are overshadowed by hostile threat-based memes that rise out of the fundamental conflict at the core of life. Reality is made up of living beings who move about in order to obtain as much energy and freedom as possible. Evolution describes the way in which all beings are faced with these survival pressures.

Again, from lower memes, this reality of nature “red in tooth and claw” is used to justify competition, aggression, and the glorification of strength and power. People at higher memes are able to question this. Green, yellow, and turquoise ways of thinking harness sabi to soften defensiveness. From these points of view the world IS full of competition, fighting, and survival but it is also full of cooperation, collaboration, flexible meme selection, healing, creative thinking, enlightenment, and a host of other realities more useful and effective when in the right context.

Sabi is not non-dual, nor is it felt only by people at higher memes, but it is a powerful mood that emerges when conditions are right and while it’s power is subtle, it’s action, over time, can produce lasting insights. Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammad, to name a few non-dual thinkers, all retreated to the wilderness where they experience, I do not doubt, sabi and it’s transforming effects.

]]>https://stillinthestream.com/2017/09/10/no-dual-thinking/feed/0IceB2000stillinthestreamSpiralDynamicChartSabi is the Bedrock of Zenhttps://stillinthestream.com/2017/08/28/sabi-is-the-bedrock-of-zen/
https://stillinthestream.com/2017/08/28/sabi-is-the-bedrock-of-zen/#commentsTue, 29 Aug 2017 04:30:03 +0000http://stillinthestream.com/?p=307]]>John G. Rudy in his book, “Wordsworth and the Zen Mind” says sabi is the bedrock of Zen enlightenment. Here is the full quote:

Chief among the moods of Zen – and the one that, for all practical purpose, forms the bedrock of Zen enlightenment – is sabi, the spirit of non-attachment or freedom. – John G. Rudy

This matter-of-fact assertion by a scholar deeply immersed in the poetic work of the English Romantics seems at first to be slightly provocative. Provocative for me because I’m not sure if I would say that sabi the spirit of non-attachment.

Sabi is Paradoxical

As I explored here, I see sabi as a paradoxical state; a combination of loneliness and satisfaction, or perhaps even sadness and contentment. These elements are popularly considered both negative and positive respectively – thus the paradox.

How is this possible to be contented and lonely at the same time? I think if we can answer that question we will glimpse the mechanism at the heart of sabi’s essential “spirit.”

Sabi is Internal

Before exploring this further, I must pause here to declare my default philosophical position. I adopt a form practical materialism primarily as a function of Occam’s razor. Materialism is continually challenged as an adequate world view by fairly hard headed scientists and certainly by scholarly philosophers. Never-the-less, the temptation to look for mystical, spiritual, and otherwise fantastic explanations for complex or subtle “natural” phenomenons raises all sorts of problems. I’ve run into trouble when I don’t stick to rigorous methods for preventing self-deception, and therefor have adopted a materialistic and skeptical predisposition as a default. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that.

When we speak of spirit, quality, mood, sabi, and enlightenment, we are, from a materialist’s perspective, describing internal states – probably in the brain or other neural tissue. These words refer to thoughts, feelings, and so on, and not anything that resides in objects out there in the landscape. To say that a misty bay has a melancholy mood to it, is simply another way of saying that the scene makes many people feel melancholy. While I more or less accept that this is true, I have walked along so many remote beaches and had my feelings turn melancholy, that I must hold open the possibility that such places have something that reliably affects me in a predictable way and may even affect any creature that walks there. This is a topic for another post, but suffice it to say that I take seriously the philosophical shadows cast by this topic.

Safety in the Herd

Some scientists assert that the feeling of loneliness evolved in super-social species to drive vulnerable individuals back to the safety of the group, herd, or pack. We are attracted by the group and repelled by being alone. Our repulsion mechanism is old and primal and when it is engaged we perceive loneliness as something to be avoided, somewhere on the spectrum of things like cliff edges, icy water, snakes, and the smell of decomposing flesh.

Competing with this natural aversion is the attraction to solitude and all the opportunities it contains. When we are alone we are the master of our own destiny, free to do or not do as we please. Also, solitude contains freedom not just from the expectations and influence of the group, but from the responsibilities to the group. Thirdly, those of us who seek out solitude find a clarity of thought, an unhurried margin in which to savour, reflect, and rest.

“Habit rules the unreflecting herd.” – William Wordsworth

A little over 50% of humans find solitude necessary to a balanced life. All humans, even extroverts, find social engagement tiring, but extroverts are more motivated by the rewards that social groups provide, and therefor overlook how much energy is required to socialize. Jenn Granneman, while conducting research for The Secret Lives of Introverts discovered that introverts find stimulating social environments difficult to endure and see occasions like parties as “punishing.”

Introverts have lower biological needs for reward than extroverts so they abandon overwhelming social situations sooner and seek relief in solitude.

Extroverts appear to have a more active dopamine reward system than introverts. This means that extroverts’ brains become more active at the sight of a possible reward, and dopamine energizes them to pursue that reward. Introverts’ brains just don’t get as active as extroverts’ at the expectation of a reward. – Jenn Granneman

Waking up Alone

Anyone who spends extended time alone in nature is familiar with the recurring moments of clarity about just how vulnerable we are by ourselves. In this clarity we grasp the reality of ourselves as an individual against the great backdrop of nature, the universe, and everything, and at the same time our dependence and connection to everything and everyone.

I like being alone in nature because it fosters these realizations. And with such realizations I find I’m humbled and grateful to be able to return to the warmth of my human attachments, connections, relationships, and family ties.

The Sabi Sweet Spot

This dynamic balance point between welcoming isolation and then feeling drawn back to the company of others, is when sabi predictably arises.

Isolation for Oneness

In true isolation there is a flattening out of emotions as all the trees, bushes, frogs, dragon flies, stones and waters relax out of their conceptual categories to become simply parts of the undifferentiated whole of nature. When this happens most of us experience a relaxed and heightened curiosity, often accompanied with a sense of having shrugged off the burden of the self. I’ve had this happen a few times and it is a desirable experience. And that is part of the problem.

Right Hemisphere Ascension or Kenshō?

This state of oneness in which conceptual categories disappear and everything is perceived as one unified whole, is Kensho, literally “seeing nature” and also often referred to as “self realization” or seeing the self in it’s unified context.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in her 2008 TED talk, and subsequent book, talks about her experience of achieving a state similar to Kensho when her left hemisphere was taken off-line by a stroke.

I do not see the extinguishing of the left hemisphere as the goal or end game or outcome of meditation, or other similar spiritual practices. I don’t go into isolated natural settings to extinguish my logical, rational, self. Nor do I see a particular virtue in Right Hemisphere dominance. The evidence is fairly clear that for neuroscientists the brain functions as a whole with some specialized areas, but not so specialized as to warrant elevating one over the other.

Instead I see Kensho as a developmental reality for anyone who spends time and attention fostering sabi and related moods. Specifically I think Sabi and the Kensho-like realizations that are associated with it are keys to a mature kind of awareness. The Awareness of suchness.

Suchness

Suchness is “what is.” Kensho is seeing suchness, without questions, considerations, concepts, and thoughts. Frederick Franck describes this seeing of suchness as unsymbolization, and I have adopted his phrase.

“What is Zen? Zen is the unsymbolization of the world and all the things in it.” Frederick Franck – Zen and Zen Classics

Unsymbolization occurs when we allow sabi to arise in us and wash us with a sense of our impermanence and limits. Sabi’s main function is to confront us with beauty un-coupled from judgement, standing alone from concepts of good and bad. This rusty old useless piece of metal is beautiful. Period.

Unsymbolization is in fact a maturation of symbolization. Like ego development, it is necessary to symbolize the world before we can unsymbolize it. All these words I’m writing are symbols. Without them, I could not communicate. But I go to nature, find solitude, and move my mind towards sabi as part of the balance that mature minds seek.

I AM interested in letting go of the ego, and I am interested in letting go of symbolization, but only as a step towards a more balanced maturity, not as a retreat into the precognitive or some mindless place where the troubles of life can not intrude.

I believe that solitude creates a space for sabi to arise which leads to unsymbolization which leads to the realization of suchness. Suchness is also the emptying that meditators experience, the state that can not be grasped – perhaps zen itself.

Awareness of suchness is bringing ourselves into harmony with what is, ceasing to want what “should be” and finding peace and contentment in every aspect of reality, not just the ones we desire.

So, to return finally to the questions I started this post with, I think it is fair to say, that sabi IS the chief mood of Zen, in that it reliably facilitates the move to an awareness of suchness.

The Inner Voice

As mentioned above, the contemplation of nature, especially when it involves the experience of sabi, can produce a satisfying merging with nature, seeing oneself as a biological function within a larger system. At the same time it can produce an awareness of our own undeniably present ego.

Whether paddling a canoe, walking a mountain ridge, or sitting amid a stillness of trees, the inner voice seems louder. Desires seem stronger. Especially the social desires. When truly alone my thoughts turn to others, to my vulnerability without others, to my longing for community, for belonging, for attachment.

Sabi, according to Rudy, is the spirit of nonattachment, the mark of true freedom. Sabi from this perspective is not loneliness or deterioration or impermanence; it is instead a clear apprehension of some quality within everything that is no particular thing.

To put it less mystically, sabi is the mood of rested wakefulness that time spent in nature brings.

A.L. Sadler, writing about the Tea Ceremony says that the “admiration for the natural rhythm and quiet grace of things” was what the Zen devotee achieved through monastic life. He references Kaneyoshi’s book entitled The Susabi Brush, which Sadler translates as “Consolations of the brush” because the sabi element of roughness is integral to achieving the state of mind necessary to be “ok with” life as it is. My own translation might be “A Brush with Roughness.”

A very insightful essay written by a virtually anonymous student at Tokyo’s Sophia University states, “Sabi originally meant the gradual appearance of the inner essence of things.”

This is a succinct description of what happens for a person contemplating nature. It is a type of paradoxical insight that joins an awareness of thisness with an awareness of suchness.

The Sophia University Student, Aine, adds, “At the end of the Heian era, people started to seek truths of things in the atmosphere of roughness, susabi, and calmness, sabi. And the words started to appear in Japanese poems. During the Muromachi era, the Sabi idea became deeper in meaning. … This deepness meant aesthetic feeling that was full of silence and transient withering. Influenced by Cha, Sabi started to mean a calm and peaceful situation. People achieved the situation after they realized the contrast and the difference between luxury and Wabi. (Haibunngaku Daijiten)”

I like this idea of seeking the truth of things in the atmosphere of roughness and calmness that exists in nature. My years of camping and paddling in wilderness gave me a profound conviction that the insights available there are only possible when I am content. That is to say, well fed and clothed, safe, and relaxed.

Sabi, then, is a different avenue to suchness than the Ascetic path of self-sacrifice. This lines up with many religions traditions of the “middle path,” but it goes a little further. To risk being overly cute, it raises “aesthetics” to the level that “ascetics” once had.

Beauty, according to this way of looking at things, can be an aid to enlightenment. For the person who finds a restful wakefulness in the contemplation of nature, beauty can be an expansive universal quality that triggers profound insight.

“Sabi is the mood of rested wakefulness that time spent in nature brings.” – Richard R Powell

But is Sabi Non-Attachment?

Is sabi the same as non-attachment? I hope that my discussion above clarifies that it is not.instead it is a mood that is essential for the state of mind that can produce non-attachment. From a rational perspective it helps us recognize the conceptual framework we use to filter the world through, and in recognizing that, we can begin to let go of the grid-work of categories that make up the framework. From a subjective perspective it is an opening sensation that satisfies at a deep level.

Sabi Summary

To summarize it as succinctly as I can, Sabi can lead to an awareness of suchness, and so to freedom from the constraints of both conceptual categories AND all judgements, expectations, and hopes for what “should be,” “could be,” “ought to be” or “might be.”

Maturity and Depth

Kensho is a good word, because it describes a kind of enlightenment that is mostly fleeting. I could go out into the wilderness again and again in search of sabi moments, basking in the paradoxical feeling of union and individuation, but if that is all I ever did, I would not be enlightened.

For me, it has become a process of deeper and deeper insight into just how enmeshed adulthood is with a concepts of control, prediction, and agency. With sabi we can let go of these egoic props and begin to let go of adulthood.

Letting Go of Adulthood

We can rely on sabi to move us towards an acceptance of all aspects of nature, from predation to copulation, to migration, to stagnation. Sabi is not abstract, not conceptual, it is instead a reliable mood that we can find in isolated remote natural settings.

With sabi we can accept what is, with a non-grasping holding of things with great appreciation. If this mood, this wakeful mindlessness, can be sustained; if attention can be held on the beauty that arises moment by moment from everything, then enlightenment is possible in a real and lasting sense.

That enlightenment is a growing thing, a step by step collection of Kensho moments that involve letting go of more and more of the things that hold us back. Hopes, ideals, treasures, expectations, and most of all desires.

The thing past adulthood is still resolving, but I have a sense that it will be unexpectedly alive and poetic.

In weakness we create distinctions, then believe that all our puny boundaries are things which we perceive and not which we have made.

All beings that live with god, themselves are god, existing in the mighty whole, as indistinguishable as the cloudless East at noon is from the cloudless West, when all the hemisphere is one cerulean blue.

Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. – Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac

]]>https://stillinthestream.com/2015/12/03/still-in-the-stream-deep-explorations-of-sabi/feed/1Pretty2000stillinthestreamSecondary Benefitshttps://stillinthestream.com/2015/11/04/secondary-benefits/
https://stillinthestream.com/2015/11/04/secondary-benefits/#respondWed, 04 Nov 2015 03:07:20 +0000http://stillinthestream.com/?p=278]]>I said on the “Why is Sabi Important” page that there are secondary benefits to embracing sabi and moving into a way of looking at the world through a sabi lens. Here I will, in the coming months, unpack this in more detail.

Accepting All That Is?

Well, maybe not all that is, but I have found that much if not most of our suffering comes from wishing things were different than they are.

]]>https://stillinthestream.com/2015/11/04/secondary-benefits/feed/0FrostyRiver2000stillinthestreamA Long Missed Shifthttps://stillinthestream.com/2015/10/17/a-long-missed-shift/
https://stillinthestream.com/2015/10/17/a-long-missed-shift/#respondSat, 17 Oct 2015 02:03:53 +0000http://stillinthestream.com/?p=273]]>There have been NO MUSHROOMS in Nanaimo so far this fall. With failing hope on my walk today I wandered from time to time off the trail, poking mournfully at the ground with my walking stick. Eventually I gave up and decided to just enjoy the walk. As I came around one curve in the path I stopped and looked at this scene:

Something in the way the branches filled up the space with horizontal lines, the autumn light, late in the day, and the deep reassuring stillness caused a sort of mental pop in my head. I felt it like a knot un-knotting. Pop, un-knot.

I was suddenly full of a warm shy contentment angling up towards joy at the edges. I smiled. It has been a very long time since such a feeling has come to me. I carried on down the trail, swinging my stick and breathing in the green smelling air, lungs not big enough to take in as much as I would like, shoulders not broad enough to throw back on my spine like a devil may care mendicant; but certainly I had knees enough to saunter and lips to whistle a gentle tune into the silent tree space, where pips of little brown creepers came back to me as a kind of distant echo.

]]>https://stillinthestream.com/2015/10/17/a-long-missed-shift/feed/0Mist2000stillinthestreamThisnesshttps://stillinthestream.com/2015/10/11/thisness/
https://stillinthestream.com/2015/10/11/thisness/#commentsSun, 11 Oct 2015 18:02:27 +0000http://stillinthestream.com/?p=259]]>Haecceity (from the Latin haecceitas – pronounced heck-see-ity) is usually translated as “thisness.” Duns Scotus is believed to be the first person to use the word to denote the wholly unique components that make a person or object unlike any other person or object. In a certain sense it is the emergent quality of a thing that we recognize as being one of a kind and therefore worth great value.

A sensitivity to “thisness” is one of the central muscles of a poetic mind. With it we move out of categorizing all stones as “stones,” which is a time saving device, into contemplation of this particular stone, which is a time occupying device. We pick up the stone, we turn it over, we appreciate it for it’s thisness. This of course is not a muscle exclusive to the poetic mind. The scientific mind also requires this working, this using of effort. In thisness the scientist and the poet stand together — in curiosity, in wonder sometimes, at the profoundness of this one unique thing, this anomalous data-point varying from all other data-points, yet clustering into that cloud of similarity that evokes the classification.

We make sense of the world by placing each thing into these clouds, these clouds of similar qualities, or similar appearances, or rigorous distinctions. Species, elements, personalities, types, kinds — the categories at least less numerous than the objects inside them.

The scientist must contemplate an objects thisness to determine which clouds the object belongs in, creating complicated Ven diagrams to nudge the object into understanding. Understanding arising out of the process of classification.

Thisness for the poet, however, is more about gratefulness, appreciation, and delight in somethings particular charm. While all rainbow trout are beautiful, this one is a little deeper in the belly, has a little larger tail, and those combinations make THIS trout more beautiful or significant or trouty than the others.

Finding the unique in all things is not possible for us, but perhaps is the pleasant task of God.

Speakers like Tony Robbins and Sharon Pope as well as a growing number of Psychologists say that suppressing or avoiding feelings is not good for us. This includes suppression of negative emotions. Experiments show that suppression of emotions leads to increased sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system and worse memory for social information such as names or facts about individuals seen on slides 1.

There are also authoritative references that link cancer to a “type C personality.” Type C personalities are known for their tendency to “suppress wants, needs and desires.” 2. The implication being, I suppose, that suppressing these things somehow increases the risk of cancer.

The logic goes that feelings that are not acknowledged continue to arise until we pay attention to them.

“If you ignore an emotion, it will get stronger.”

All feelings carry information for us and therefore none are really negative, according to Karla McLaren. Sadness tells us we experienced a loss. Jealousy that we need better alignment with a source of love. Anger that we need to restate our voice or set a boundary. And so on. When we push them away, we reinforce a belief that ignorance is bliss, a truism that only applies to subjects we don’t need to know about.

I have discovered from my own tendency to ignore unpleasant emotions, that ignorance is the mildest form on a spectrum of illusions about “what is.” At the extreme end are delusions I only wish were true. I like them better than what is actually going on. Denying what is and clinging to a fantasy, however, is dangerous to my mental health. But so is stark realism. Some optimism and a positive outlook can motivate me to change situations in my life that initially seem insurmountable, but never the less are not; and a dream that is “not yet” true can inspire me to improve the world, not just for myself, but for others.

But I always found it difficult to figure out when to follow a dream, and when to face reality. Two years ago I discovered the Welcoming Prayer.

I began using this prayer daily to start my meditation time. I found it difficult at first, especially when trying to welcome things into my life that I perceived as truly awful. I was welcoming loneliness, sadness, fear, and anxiety. I was welcoming sickness, pain, loss, and hardship. It seemed outrageous to welcome nasty people, unfair circumstances, and painful conditions when what I really wanted was them all to go away. I wanted freedom from them all. So then I let go of the desire for freedom!

It felt crazy to let go of my desire for survival too. What if that meant I didn’t survive? “What if” indeed.

I discovered that the key is to focus on those desires that are causing me suffering. Worried about loosing my job? Welcome anxiety, let go of the desire for self sufficiency. Sad about a relationship that didn’t work out? Welcome loneliness, let go of the desire for affection and love.

The crazy thing is, it works!

When I embrace whatever I am pushing away and let go of the underlying desire, I really do open to the the love and action of God within. Even when I am doubting the existence of God.

This prayer sends a strong message to the subconscious that I will not be driven by desire. It is a mindful transfer of motivation from biology and fear, to what practitioners call the “true self.”

The True Self

The true self is understood by different people to be different things. But whatever the true self is, they all agree that surrendering the things you desire most — puts you in contact with it.

The true self is your authentic self, your imago dei, that part of you that is connected to God [or higher wiser part of yourself if you don’t believe in God]. Once you’re in right alignment with that, you can decide what you are going to do in the outer world from a place of calm acceptance. Sometimes you might choose to fight, achieve, compete, or strive for something important. Other times you might choose to acquiesce.

The important effect is that now the choice is not made from desperation or grasping. It is made from a sense of thoughtfulness and reflection.

And I find this state very similar to that dearest interest of mine, sabi. When desire has been disengaged the poetic vision can unfold. This kind of poetic vision is it’s own reward, but it also opens the mind to the layers in any experience. Paradox, irony, pathos, all become richer and more interesting. This is a mellow and tempered state, full of richness and value.

So, it seems, the Welcoming Prayer is a practice that can foster connection to the True Self; and being so connected allows most of us to more easily enter the state of being that is, or is very similar to, sabi.

Could it be that the poetic drive, specifically the poetic drive behind haiku and other forms of nature aesthetics, is a way to connect to the True Self? I am beginning to think so…

]]>https://stillinthestream.com/2015/08/25/the-welcoming-prayer/feed/0Canoe2000stillinthestreamWelcomingPrayer600Sun Through SpireaThe Way of Elegancehttps://stillinthestream.com/2015/07/27/the-way-of-elegance/
https://stillinthestream.com/2015/07/27/the-way-of-elegance/#respondMon, 27 Jul 2015 08:11:19 +0000http://stillinthestream.wordpress.com/?p=193]]>When I was at David Thompson University Centre I took my first course in Linguistics. I discovered that the study of a word’s history, it’s parts and evolution, was strangely pleasurable and enlightening. More than any other course I took that year, it inspired me to explore the meaning wrapped up in words and language. Here are a few Japanese words that I have found helpful in uncovering this way of life I seem destined to live.

Way of Elegance –
Two root Japanese words michi (way or path) and
fuga (the elegance of poetry) make up the phrase.

Fuga, refers to the elegance of poetry. The word is made up of two root words: ‘Fu’ which means the habits and manners of the common folk and ‘Ga’ which refers to the grace or gracefulness of ceremonies at court.

Ga is achieved by a poet who is experienced, recognized, and advanced in artistic studies.

English words that convey a similar quality are ‘cultured’ or ‘civilized’.

The renowned Japanese court poets tried to express ga with idealized and romanticized images. Thus ga is sometimes thought of as artistic and spiritual purity. With this in mind we might translate fuga as ‘common ways with grace’, or ‘blue-jean eloquence’ or even ‘spiritual art grounded in reality.’

In the classic literature of Japan a writer who wished to create literature that was fuga would practice furyu by retiring to nature for solitary contemplation.

Furyu literally means ‘wind and stream’ or ‘in the way of the wind and stream.’ It is a practice that gradually expands your sense of beauty, taste, and aesthetic appreciation. The poet Yosa Buson re-introduced Basho’s concept of furyu after it had fallen out of use. A master of both poetry and painting, and a leader of the haiku revival that occurred between 1765 and 1785, Buson refocused Basho’s concept in what he called ‘the principle of rizoku,’ which meant ‘transcending the ordinary.’ To achieve transcendence Buson said a poet should study classical verse, distance herself from the realms of commerce and competition, and contemplate the simple beauties of nature.

The Way of Elegance is a phrase that combines elements of Fuga and Furyu. Two root Japanese words michi (way or path) and fuga (the elegance of poetry) make up the phrase. Think of a well educated farmer or an artist who supports herself washing floors. The Way of Elegance involves following furyu, and practicing artistic expression as a form of spiritual discipline.

Still in the stream refers to this journey on the way of elegance. “In the stream” is being immersed in flow — being Furyu. “Still” suggest unmoving persistence or patience. Patiently being in the stream doing creative things. Being in the creative “zone” to such a degree that time stops. This flow state produces a state of being that artists need to produce great works and scientists need to obtain great insights.

]]>https://stillinthestream.com/2015/07/27/the-way-of-elegance/feed/0Bugs2000stillinthestreamAmonite Falls Continuing To Be Still In The Streamhttps://stillinthestream.com/2015/07/19/continuing-to-be-still-in-the-stream/
https://stillinthestream.com/2015/07/19/continuing-to-be-still-in-the-stream/#respondSun, 19 Jul 2015 19:10:23 +0000http://stillinthestream.wordpress.com/?p=177]]>Shortly after the publication of my first book on wabi sabi in 2004 I created a website called stillinthesteam.com. I maintained a full site with contests, articles, and news, for 10 years, then transferred my domain name here in July of 2015. I want to shift my focus from the wider wabi sabi ideal, to the application of sabi in everyday life. I still believe that the the phrase “still in the stream” captures the paradox and joy I’m following, and also searching for. When I started my 100 lakes project it was a way to more deeply explore sabi through a practice known as Kanjaku. The 100 lakes blog has largely been a series of travelogs with the occasional post of my philosophical musings.

Over the years I launched new blogs to try and chronicle some of the inner journey I have been on, but as is often the case for me, and those with similar personalities to mine, I don’t seem to make much progress after the initial inspiration. But this is what it means, in part, to be still in the stream. Still, in this sense, equates to “continuing to exist, or persist” in the stream. Mid stream really. “Nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, nothing is finished.” And the nothing being finished part, like the rest, is not a bad thing. We want perfect lasting completion. We want to be able to relax out of striving, seeking, and working into accomplishment, answers, and rest. For me, those qualities are not bad, but the exploration of wabi sabi had confirmed for me that goals promise satisfaction and contentment one day, and as attractive as this sounds, it is an illusion. Because satisfaction and contentment are as transitory as all other feelings in life.

So, being still in the stream is being ankle or knee or even waist deep in the flow — in the process. But there is another kind of stillness that is not persisiting-in-the-moment-ness but more along the line of persisting-in-the-momentlessness. This is the stillness which we think of as being without movement. The stillness of a meditator, of a person in reverie, and of objects that reside in one place for a long time. It is the air that seems not to move in a forest glade, the water that seems not to move on a calm pond. We love the look and feel and experience of this kind of stillness. And most of us know it is a relative thing. Even when the mist is rising off a glassy lake, and the reeds and rushes stand like sentinels, we know that the mist is swirling in very small movements of air, and rings appear on the water from fish moving below the surface. Stillness of this kind is really a reduction of motion, a quieting of frenetic activity which seems somehow to hush our mind, to create a mindful state in which we can let go some of the burden we seem to be carrying. I’m realizing now that letting go, is perhaps as important to sabi as being still. And also, there is the stream. Always the stream. More on this as I go along…

What if deep poetry flowed through your day-to-day life? What if writing that poetry was a path to enlightenment? Basho, the grandfather of haiku poetry, named this path, “the Way of Elegance” because it connects you to grace and fills your life with subtle beauty.

I began writing Wabi Sabi for Writers, to communicate the significance of this path for writers, but I ended up with a book for anyone who wants the poetic light inside them to penetrate the darkness that surrounds them.

Basho knew the central defining quality of his culture was: “a sensitivity to things,” and he deliberately and thoughtfully crafted practices to support and deepen that sensitivity. These practices allowed the quality to expand his life.

Unfortunately he found that while “a sensitivity to things” expanded his awareness of beauty it also expanded his awareness of suffering. This heightened awareness of both beauty and suffering leads some people to despair. This is because our capacity to tolerate suffering in those around us seems to decrease as our awareness increases. When faced with an increase in awareness of suffering, many people instinctively turn away from sensitivity and become hardened, detached or distracted.

The Buddhist culture around Basho taught non-attachment as the correct approach to suffering. Non-attachment was not a turning away from suffering, but a calming of the emotional reactions to suffering through practice of the eightfold path. All other solutions were seen as delusions or deceptions.

Contrary to this prevailing belief, Basho demonstrated that we can avoid developing hard hearts without practicing non-attachment if, instead, we experience our attachments in a deeper way. Basho’s interpretation of wabi sabi made this possible.

One way to understand Sabi is to see it as a step beyond sensitivity to things, to see it as a deep awareness of the poetry at the heart of all things. The curious magic of this literary awareness is that while you are focused on the poetry in each object of attachment, your ego is quieted. To have a sabi mind you allow ego to rest in this un-voiced poetry. This new understanding of Sabi as an antidote to despair was Basho’s most important discovery. Sabi, he realized, was central to the Way of Elegance.

The Way of Elegance encourages a creative response to challenge and difficulty and produces eccentricity, pluckiness, fortitude, and resourcefulness. Yet sabi by itself can be overdone. The depth and character that comes from this clear-minded approach to life can make you feel mature, seasoned, and even superior. This is where wabi comes in. Wabi is the humbling factor, the stabilizing reality of the vastness and complexity of nature and our own place in it. When the two are balanced, they produce a lightness in a writers work which Basho called “karumi.”

Wabi Sabi for Writers, presents wabi sabi as a balanced set of principles that help a person face into the winds of change, look on the imperfect world with acceptance, and find, mixed within the dark elements of existence, bright strands of joy. Through examples and stories the book illustrates how to expand your sense of beauty until each moment brims with light.

One of the key concepts on the way of elegance is “furyu.” Basho discovered in his life of reading and thinking and wandering and teaching and writing that all of these things contributed to Furyu which literally means “in the way of the wind and stream”. It is putting yourself in the traffic, launching yourself into the action, not necessarily as a player, but deliberately, as the eyes and ears and taste buds and sense of smell. Furyu is a powerful tool that shows you what you like, and also what you love.

Basho adopted Furyu as his central attitude and orientation and found that it generated inspiration, poetry, and enlightenment. An ancient Japanese word with roots in the Chinese language, Furyu describes a stance or approach that puts a person on the path of elegance. If you would like to learn more about how to develop Furyu in your life, about how to naturalize your creative activities and find transcendence through harmony with nature, then Wabi Sabi for Writers if for you.

Wabi Sabi for Writers is divided into 9 chapters. Chapters 2 through 5 discuss ways of being that are mirrored in chapters 6 through 9 which discuss acts of doing: